 In August 1990, his contract with the BBC was terminated when he initially refused to pay the Community Charge (also known as the "poll tax"), a local tax Margaret Thatcher's government introduced that year.He ultimately paid it, but his announcement that he was willing to go to prison rather than pay prompted the BBC, by charter an impartial public-service broadcaster, to distance itself from him.Icke began to flirt with alternative medicine and New Age philosophies in the 1980s in an effort to relieve his arthritis, and this encouraged his interest in Green politics.